Why to Go Green

You’ve probably noticed that green is everywhere these days--in the news, politics, fashion, and even technology. You can hardly escape it on the Internet, and now with the Planet Green TV network, you can even enjoy eco-friendly entertainment 24 hours a day. That’s all great as far as we’re concerned, but with a million messages and ideas coming at us from all sides, it can be easy to get caught up in the quotidian stuff—switching to organic foods, turning down the thermostat, recycling, say -- without thinking about the big picture of how your actions stack up. Worse, you could even be suffering from a little green "fatigue" -- that is, tuning out the green messages due to their ubiquity.


While it's easy to get overwhelmed, it's also simple to begin making a positive impact. Since it's helpful to understand the big picture when it comes to setting to smaller goals, we’ve adjusted our focus for this guide—a departure from out typical "how to go green" content, which typically tackles very specific topics such as kitchens, cars, or pets -- to take a broader look at the reasons behind why we should go green.

As globalization makes the world become smaller, it becomes increasingly easy to see how the lives of people (and plants and animals and ecosystems) everywhere are closely synced up with one another. So toys made in China can affect the quality of life in Europe, pesticides used in Argentina can affect the health of people in the U.S., and greenhouse gas emissions from Australia can affect a diminishing rainforest in Brazil.

The truth is that everything single thing we do every day has an impact on the planet -- good or bad. The good news is that as an individual you have the power to control most of your choices and, therefore, the impact you create: from where you live to what you buy, eat, and use to light your home to where and how you vacation, to how you shop or vote, you can have global impact. For example, did you know that 25 percent of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from flora that come from the Amazon rainforest? And that less that one percent of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists? These numbers suggest that we all have a large (and growing) personal stake in the health and vitality of places far and near. In addition to protecting biodiversity (and inspiring medicine), rainforests are also excellent carbon sinks. Bottom line: It benefits everyone on the planet to help keep our wild spaces alive and growing.

But embracing a greener lifestyle isn't just about helping to preserve equatorial rain forests, it can also mean improving your health, padding your bank account, and, ultimately, improving your overall quality of life. All that and you can save furry animals, too? Why wouldn't anyone want to green? Keep reading for all the important, big-picture details.

Source: www.planetgreen.com

How The Environment Affects Your Health

It has been a banner week for biomedical news. The Institute of Medicine released a provocative and somewhat controversial report on calcium and vitamin D intake; the American Cancer Society announced results of an enormous study reaffirming the link between body mass index and mortality; there was at least aleatory passage of a historic food safety bill in Congress; and a long awaited update to federal policy governing child nutrition was passed and awaits the President's signature.


Ordinarily, this content would populate my public health reflections to their far horizon. But seen from just a bit of altitude; viewed through a wider angle lens than my habitual routine accords -- these headlines announce modest news about modest measures related to our singularly immodest perspective on our own health. There is far more to health than is generally dreamed of within the purview of biomedicine.

I know, because my horizons have been widened. This past week I was privileged to join an illustrious group, convened by the Wildlife Conservation Society at their headquarters on the grounds of the Bronx Zoo, to address the contention that there is only one health. The "one health" concept stipulates, essentially, that the health of people will be promoted along with the health of the planet, its diverse ecosystems, and its biodiversity, or it won't be promoted at all.

What made the group illustrious? Aside from the fact that virtually everyone in the assemblage, with the exception of me, has a career devoted to protecting the native magnificence of our planet, the group was noteworthy for every aspect of its pedigree. Outstanding work, outstanding achievement, extraordinary devotion. Intelligence, passion, eloquence, fortitude, resourcefulness. Participants represented premier organizations, from the Wildlife Conservation Society, to Conservation International, to the Nature Conservancy, to World Wildlife Fund, to Harvard University, Stanford University, Columbia University, and in the case of my modest contributions, Yale University.

What was I doing there? Ah, there's the rub! Alas, this group -- to which I should simply be sending accolades -- has ostensible need of me.

The scientists at the meeting -- many of whom have spent arduous years in some of the planet's most dazzling, important, fragile and embattled ecosystems -- from the Arctic to the Amazon, from the Australian Outback to the Mongolian Steppes, from the jungles of Borneo to the jungles of Brazil, from the island of Madagascar to the islands of Fiji -- have collectively reached this fundamental conclusion: nobody really cares.

Well, I suppose that takes it a step too far. Lots of people do care about our planetary cohabitants and the places they and we call home. But not nearly enough people care, and people care not nearly enough to make the requisite differences. Not enough to stop the damage. The places and their denizens are ever more imperiled as we collectively squander every successive opportunity to rectify the trajectory of our impacts.

So the conservationists and wildlife biologists have conceded that the only way to make the case for what they do is through the lens of public health, and that's where I -- and others like me -- come in. We, from the human health community, are being asked to draw up chairs at the big table -- the "let's save the planet" table and help elucidate how saving oceans and lakes, mountains and jungles -- will help save people.

More specifically, the enterprise incubated at the meeting I attended involves the generation of specific, collaborative research projects to show the costs to human health of ecosystem-degradation-as-usual: the costs to human health of burning down rain forests; the costs to human health of cyanide fishing of coral reefs; the costs to human health of disrupting traditional food sources; the costs to human health of increased CO2 in our atmosphere.

We gathered secure in the conviction that there are such costs, that they can be measured, and that they are high. But that they need to be on the marquee is sad testimony to our world view. The global human population does not, apparently, acknowledge intrinsic value in the status of the globe. My conservation colleagues' unfortunate need of me is predicated on the sad inability of our species to see intrinsic value in any other species.

Environmental scientists can readily show on their own the cost to the rain forest of burning down the rain forest; public health counterparts are needed to help show the immediate cost to human lungs downwind of those fires. Environmental scientists can show on their own the cost to coral reefs of cyanide fishing; public health scientists are needed to help show the toll on nutritional status of coastal peoples dependent on the diversity of sea life those reefs formerly supported. Environmental scientists can show on their own the impact on biodiversity of human incursions into pristine areas; public health colleagues are needed to help demonstrate the association with emerging infectious diseases and potentially devastating outbreaks. Environmental scientists can tell us what species are being dispossessed by deforestation; public health counterparts are needed to help tally the human cases of malaria directly attributable to the enterprise.

And so I go from my routine allocation of effort to cultivating the health of humans who, in our masses, routinely abuse the planet, to offering what I can to a group trying to save the planet from those abuses. I love the people I care for, and that's why I do what I do. And what I do is important both for the immediacy of its responsiveness to human need, and its scope.

One in three American adults will have diabetes by 2050, testimony to the importance of work I and others do related to diabetes prevention. But all three of those three American adults, and their counterparts around the globe, will have need of a habitable, vital planet in 2050 and every year thereafter. So I can't help but view my invitation to the One Health table as a promotion.

For there is indeed but one health for all -- people, animals and planet -- to share. Our neglect of this imperative, our blindness to this blunt reality is at our collective peril. It is borne by either egomania, or mindlessness.

If mindlessness is our excuse, we must concede we are much like a parasite or virus that replicates at the expense of its host. And once its mindless replication toasts the host, the parasite, too, is doomed. One health, indeed. Are we that parasite, and earth the host?

If not, and sentience is our distinction, we are the more malignant for it. If we are destroying our host mindfully, there can be but one explanation: we are so ego maniacal as to think that the short term pursuit of our own profit -- however measured -- justifies the plunder of the planetary body that sustains pursuit and profit alike.

We are pillaging the planet that hosts us for short term gain. If anything ever epitomized penny-wise, pound-foolish conduct -- it is to profit in the short term at the long term expense of the source of all profit, and of life itself. Indeed, one of the objectives of the One Health initiative is to show that even in the short term, costs of environmental degradation outweigh profits; health economists were at the table to advance this agenda. In all likelihood, our plunder of the planet has established a new frontier for calamitous folly: penny-foolish and pound-foolish alike.

We have but one home. We have but one health. That we can manage to see it only through the lens of short term human impacts is testimony to the limits of our sight. But this view, too, will make the case.

Eventually the lens won't matter. Sooner, later, just in time, or tragically too late -- every view will reveal just one health, or just what's left when it's gone.


Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP


Director, Prevention Research Center


Yale University School of Medicine


http://www.davidkatzmd.com/

http://www.turnthetidefoundation.org/

Energias Renováveis em Portugal - O Desafio.

No final do século XX, o aumento da poluição, o efeito de estufa e a previsível escassez petrolífera levaram a comunidade científica, em primeiro lugar, e depois os governos, a advogarem o uso de energias alternativas.


As energias alternativas, como a solar, a geotérmica, a eólica ou a hídrica, para além de serem ambientalmente favoráreis, são praticamente inesgotáveis. No entanto, os interesses financeiros de alguns grupos económicos, a falta de incentivos para Investigação e Desenvolvimento e a inexistência de tecnologias baratas que permitam a sua utilização em grande escala, levam a que a sua importância no panorama energético internacional seja ainda reduzida.

O problema energético europeu

A nível europeu, dados relativos ao ano 2000 apontam para uma dependência energética externa da UE em contínuo aumento. Actualmente, 50% das necessidades energéticas da UE são supridas por produtos importados, maioritariamente do Médio Oriente e da Rússia, e pensa-se que este número poderá aumentar. Esta fraqueza da UE tem tido consequências económico-financeiras evidentes, por exemplo, aquando do forte aumento dos preços do petróleo, em finais do ano 2000.

Em Portugal, os números não são muito diferentes, com o nosso País muito dependente do exterior para o fornecimento de energia. Assim, as importações líquidas de energia têm vindo a aumentar, de 15 501 000 tep em 1990, para 24 118 091 tep em 2000. Registe-se que, em 2000, a produção doméstica nacional foi de 2 426 909 tep, cerca de 10% do total importado. Adicionalmente, o consumidor português ‘gasta’ cada vez mais energia; assim, se em 1990 um português consumia 1,66 tep de energia primária, em 1999 este valor era de 2,35 tep. Outro dado importante é que o nosso país continua a aumentar a sua intensidade energética (consumo de energia por unidade de PIB), contrariamente ao que acontece nos restantes países UE, o que significa que, em média, por cada unidade de PIB produzida em Portugal, gastamos mais energia que os restantes membros da UE.

Energias renováveis: parte da solução

Dada a inexistência de fontes petrolíferas nacionais ou europeias em larga escala, a dependência energética externa, a forte poluição atmosférica provocada pelo uso massivo de combustíveis petrolíferos e, também, os compromissos assumidos no âmbito do Protocolo de Quioto de diminuição da libertação de gases com efeito de estufa (GEE), uma das soluções para o problema passa, inevitavelmente, pelas energias renováveis (ER). Tal como foi referido, estas têm a vantagem de serem inesgotáveis e pouco agressivas para o meio ambiente.

De entre os inúmeros exemplos de ER, iremos ver com mais atenção a biomassa, em particular a biomassa florestal. Por biomassa adoptamos a definição constante da Directiva 2001/77/EC, de 27 de Setembro de 2001, isto é, “a fracção biodegradável de produtos e resíduos da agricultura (incluindo substâncias vegetais e animais), da floresta e das indústrias conexas, bem como a fracção biodegradável dos resíduos industriais e urbanos.”

Biomassa florestal

A biomassa florestal, usualmente associada aos países em vias de desenvolvimento (PVD), têm vindo a ser crescentemente utilizada nos países desenvolvidos (PV). Enquanto que nos PVD, a biomassa representa 90% da oferta energética, nos países da UE representa apenas 3%, com grandes variações de país para país. Com os apoios europeus às ER, prevê-se que possa atingir os 8,5%.

O cumprimento do Protocolo de Quioto

Caso as metas definidas no Protocolo de Quioto sejam realmente para cumprir, pelos países signatários, as suas escolhas energéticas terão necessariamente que mudar.

No caso português, a meta definida para 2008-2010, de não aumentar a emissão de GEE em mais de 27% relativamente aos valores de 1990, foi ultrapassada em 2000, com 31% de emissões. Na prática, o nosso país já gastou o crédito de emissões e terá agora que fazer um esforço suplementar para reduzi-las em, pelo menos, 4%. Estes objectivos só poderão ser atingidas combatendo os principais responsáveis pela emissão: o sector dos transportes e da oferta de energia.

Como pode a biomassa regular as emissões de CO2 atmosférico?


Contrariamente à energia produzida pelas centrais eléctricas a carvão, na combustão de biocombustíveis a quantidade de CO2 libertada equivale à quantidade retirada do ar durante o crescimento da biomassa nos anos anteriores, motivo pelo qual se considera como neutra para o ambiente a queima de biomassa.

Também a constituição de povoamentos com espécies arbóreas de rápido crescimento e curta rotação, explorados com o fim de produção de energia ou da sequestração de carbono, poderiam contribuir para esta meta. No entanto, levantam-se problemas ecológicos e ambientais a esta prática.

Os usos ancestrais dos resíduos da floresta

As transformações da sociedade portuguesa das últimas décadas, nomeadamente a diminuição da população rural, o abandono de práticas agrícolas e dos campos, levaram à desvalorização económica dos resíduos da floresta, encarados agora como lixo e abandonados na floresta. A lenha que outrora se recolhia nos baldios para o aquecimento e confecção das refeições foi substituída pela electricidade e pelo gás, a cama dos animas feita com matos foi abandonada, os fertilizantes orgânicos substituíram os matos e o estrume e os homens e mulheres que roçavam o mato vieram para a cidade.


A produção de energia eléctrica a partir da biomassa

A presença de matos e de outros resíduos da exploração florestal nas matas e povoamentos nacionais contribuem para o elevado número de incêndios que, anualmente, consomem mais de 100 mil hectares.

A biomassa florestal existente pode ser transformada, pelas diferentes tecnologias de conversão, em energia térmica e eléctrica, trazendo importantes benefícios sociais, económicos e ambientais. Uma contabilização dos resíduos florestais existentes nos povoamentos nacionais aponta para um potencial energético de 44,55 PetaJoule por ano, o equivalente a 1 238 milhões de litros de petróleo.

No nosso País existem duas centrais termoeléctricas que permitem o uso dos resíduos florestais para produção de energia eléctrica. Uma das centrais localiza-se em Mortágua (Central de Mortágua) e a outra em Vila Velha de Ródão (Centroliva, SA). A Centroliva tem menor dimensão, com uma capacidade instalada de 3 MW e um consumo diário de cerca de 120 toneladas de biomassa.


A central de Mortágua representou um investimento de 25 milhões de euros, em 1999. Com este investimento esperava-se a produção de 63 GWh de energia eléctrica, para fornecimento directo à rede eléctrica nacional. Dados relativos ao ano 2001 apontam, no entanto, para uma produção muito aquém da esperada. Espera-se para breve um relatório do "Grupo de trabalho sobre biomassa florestal" do INETI sobre a actividade da central, para se perceberem as fragilidades do projecto, de forma a corrigir futuros investimentos.

Condicionantes ao uso da biomassa florestal

1. Um dos problemas na difusão e maior aproveitamento dos resíduos florestais é a sua baixa densidade que, ao encarecer o transporte, implica que o mesmo só se faça de forma rentável para pequenas distâncias. Terão que ser equacionadas práticas de compactação ou estilhaçamento no local de recolha do material vegetal, de modo a rentabilizar economicamente o transporte e evitar um acréscimo da circulação rodoviário;

2. Grande parte dos produtores de resíduos florestais não se encontra sensibilizada para a sua utilização energética; será necessária uma maior divulgação e incentivos para fomentar esta prática;

3. É importante aumentar a divulgação da reutilização de resíduos madeireiros em processos fabris;

4. O aproveitamento da biomassa florestal requer cuidados especiais, de modo a que a vegetação que permaneça no local consiga assegurar a protecção dos solos e a manutenção dos habitats;

5. Falta de um levantamento nacional para identificação do potencial de utilização de biomassa, o que condiciona possíveis investimentos financeiros nesta matéria.

O desafio português

A problemática energia/ambiente e as orientações legislativas da UE levaram o governo português a publicar, em Setembro de 2001, o programa E4 “Eficiência Energética e Energias Endógenas”. Este Programa envolve um conjunto de medidas com o objectivo de, pela promoção da eficiência energética e da valorização das energias endógenas, contribuir para a melhoria da competitividade da economia nacional e para a modernização da sociedade portuguesa, salvaguardando simultaneamente a qualidade de vida das gerações vindouras, pela redução de emissões atmosféricas. Uma das medidas mais ambiciosas do E4 é a meta imposta de, num horizonte de 10 a 15 anos, 39% da energia eléctrica nacional ser assegurada por energias renováveis. Relativamente à biomassa, espera-se que os investimentos, até 2010, atinjam os 160 milhões de euros. Outras medidas importantes são a promoção das fontes de energia emergentes, como a biomassa, os incentivos fiscais à utilização de energias endógenas e os apoios financeiros, via Programa Operacional da Economia.

Fontes:
www.naturlink.sapo.pt
http://www.energiasrenovaveis.com/

Green Touchscreen - Pronto a usar!

O Green Touchscreen é uma ferramenta online com o objectivo de medir a sustentabilidade e eficiência energética dos edifícios.

Esta ferramenta permite ver em tempo real o consumo de energia, visualizar a pegada de carbono, descobrir de forma interactiva a performance do edifício e aprender alguns factos sobre como ser mais sustentável e poupar mais energia.

A análise de dados que a ferramenta disponibiliza pode ser adequada conforme as necessidades de cada tipo de edifício ou para os mais variados fins: académicos, comerciais, habitação ou hospitalares.

Fonte: http://www.lxsustentavel.com/

The Next Crash Will Be Ecological -- and Nature Doesn't Do Bailouts

Why are the world's governments bothering? Why are they jetting to Cancun next week to discuss what to do now about global warming? The vogue has passed. The fad has faded. Global warming is yesterday's apocalypse. Didn't somebody leak an email that showed it was all made up? Doesn't it sometimes snow in the winter? Didn't Al Gore get fat, or molest a masseur, or something?


Alas, the biosphere doesn't read Vogue. Nobody thought to tell it that global warming is so 2007. All it knows is three facts. 2010 is globally the hottest year since records began. 2010 is the year humanity's emissions of planet-warming gases reached its highest level ever. And exactly as the climate scientists predicted, we are seeing a rapid increase in catastrophic weather events, from the choking of Moscow by gigantic unprecedented forest fires to the drowning of one quarter of Pakistan.

Before the Great Crash of 2008, the people who warned about the injection of huge destabilizing risk into our financial system seemed like arcane, anal bores. Now we all sit in the rubble and wish we had listened. The great ecological crash will be worse, because nature doesn't do bailouts.

That's what Cancun should be about -- surveying the startling scientific evidence, and developing an urgent plan to change course. The Antarctic -- which locks of 90 percent of the world's ice -- has now seen eight of its ice shelves fully or partially collapse. The world's most distinguished climate scientists, after recordings like this, say we will face a three to six feet rise in sea level this century. That means the drowning of London, Bangkok, Venice, Cairo and Shanghai, and entire countries like Bangladesh and the Maldives.

And that's just one effect of the way we are altering the chemical composition of the atmosphere. Perhaps the most startling news story of the year passed almost unnoticed. Plant plankton are tiny creatures that live in the oceans and carry out a job you and I depend on to stay alive. They produce half the world's oxygen, and suck up planet-warming carbon dioxide. Yet this year, one of the world's most distinguished scientific journals, Nature, revealed that 40 percent of them have been killed by the warming of the oceans since 1950. Professor Boris Worm, who co-authored the study, said in shock: "I've been trying to think of a biological change that's bigger than this and I can't think of one." That has been the result of less than one degree of warming. Now we are on course for at least three degrees this century. What will happen?

The scientific debate is not between deniers and those who can prove that releasing massive amounts of warming gases will make the world warmer. Every major scientific academy in the world, and all the peer-reviewed literature, says global warming denialism is a pseudo-science, on a par with Intelligent Design, homeopathy, or the claim that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. One email from one lousy scientist among tens of thousands doesn't dent that. No: the debate is between the scientists who say the damage we are doing is a disaster, and the scientists who say it is catastrophe.

Yet the world's governments are gathering in Cancun with no momentum and very little pressure from their own populations to stop the ecological vandalism. The Copenhagen conference last year collapsed after the most powerful people in the world turned up to flush their own scientists' advice down a very clean Danish toilet. These leaders are sometimes described as "doing nothing about global warming." No doubt that form of words will fill the reporting from Cancun too. But it's false. They're not "doing nothing" -- they are allowing their countries' emissions of climate-trashing gases to massively increase. That's not failure to act. It's deciding to act in an incredibly destructive way.

The collapse of Copenhagen has not shocked people into action; it has numbed them into passivity. Last year, we were talking -- in theory, at least -- about the legally binding cap on the world's carbon emissions, because the world's scientists say this is the only thing that can preserve the climate that has created and sustained human civilization. What are we talking about this year? What's on the table at Cancun, other than sand?

Almost nothing. They will talk about how to help the world's poor "adapt" to the fact we are drying out much of their land and drowning the rest. But everybody is backing off from one of the few concrete agreements at Copenhagen: to give the worst-affected countries $100 billion from 2020. Privately, they say this isn't the time -- they can come back for it, presumably, when they are on rafts. Oh, and they will talk about how to preserve the rainforests. But a Greenpeace report has just revealed that the last big deal to save the rainforests -- with Indonesia -- was a scam. The country is in fact planning to demolish most of its rainforest to plant commercial crops, and claim it had been "saved."

Karl Rove -- who was George W. Bush's chief spin-doctor -- boasted this year: "Climate is gone." He meant it is off the political agenda, but in time, this statement will be more true and more cursed than he realizes.

It's in this context that a new, deeply pessimistic framework for understanding the earth's ecology -- and our place in it -- has emerged. Many of us know, in outline, the warm, fuzzy Gaia hypothesis, first outlined by James Lovelock. It claims that the Planet Earth functions, in effect, as a single living organism called Gaia. It regulates its own temperature and chemistry to create a comfortable steady state that can sustain life. So coral reefs produced cloud-seeding chemicals which then protect them from ultraviolet radiation. Rainforests transpire water vapour so generate their own rainfall. This process expands outwards. Life protects life.

Now there is a radically different theory that is gaining adherents, ominously named the Medea hypothesis. The paleontologist Professor Peter Ward is an expert in the great extinctions that have happened in the earth's past, and he believes there is a common thread between them. With the exception of the meteor strike that happened 65 million years ago, every extinction was caused by living creatures becoming incredibly successful -- and then destroying their own habitats. So, for example, 2.3 billion years ago, plant life spread incredibly rapidly, and as it went it inhaled huge amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This then caused a rapid plunge in temperature that froze the planet and triggered a mass extinction.

Ward believes nature isn't a nurturing mother like Gaia. No: it is Medea, the figure from Greek mythology who murdered her own children. In this theory, life doesn't preserve itself. It serially destroys itself. It is a looping doomsday machine. This theory adds a postscript to Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest. There is survival of the fittest, until the fittest trash their own habitat, and do not survive at all.

But the plants 2.3 billion years ago weren't smart enough to figure out what they were doing. We are. We can see that if we release enough warming gases we will trigger an irreversible change in the climate and make our own survival much harder. Ward argues that it is not inevitable we will destroy ourselves - because human beings are the first and only species that can consciously develop a Gaian approach. Just as Richard Dawkins famously said we are the first species to be able to rebel against our selfish genes and choose to be kind, we are the first species that can rebel against the Medean rhythm of life. We can choose to preserve the habitat on which we depend. We can choose life.

Yet at Cancun, the real question will be carefully ignored by delegates keen to preserve big business as usual. Long after our own little stories are forgotten, the choice we make now will still be visible -- in the composition of the atmosphere, the swelling of the seas, and the crack and creak of the great Antarctic ice. Do we want to be Gaia, or Medea?

Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. You can email him at j.hari [at] independent.co.uk
Follow Johann Hari on Twitter: www.twitter.com/johannhari101

"GINKS" This is example of stretching perhaps a bit too much the meaning of "Green"

More People Choose Not to Have Kids for Green Reasons, Some Calling Themselves "GINKS." Would You?

A movement for "Green Inclinations, No Kids" gains momentum after studies show having one child in America increases your carbon footprint by a factor of six.

While the world talks Hummers versus hamburgers in the debate over which is worse for the planet, some greenies are taking it a step further and asking: "Who cares?" The real problem facing Mother Earth starts with an "h" -- but it's not something you use or something you eat, it's something you have.

It's humans.

Having children, particularly in wealthy, Westernized countries where people devour far more calories and resources than other more populous nations, is disastrous for the environment. If you want to make a big impact -- and not the carbon kind -- recent environmental studies conclude the best thing you can do for the planet is to make the choice not to have children. In fact, according to one recent analysis, "the carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of an extra child is almost 20 times more important than some of the other environmentally sensitive practices people might employ their entire lives -- things like driving a high mileage car, recycling, or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs."

GINK is the new DINK, they say. GINK stands for "Green Inclinations, No Kids" and is a green play on the "Double Income, No Kids" acronym, DINK, that came about during the American yuppie boom in the 1980s.

GINK is controversial, but it's catching on among a certain set of urban millenials worried about the future of the planet. Not satisfied with more commonly known green habits -- think bicycles and taking the bus, meatless Mondays and organic vegetables, turning off the water and turning off the lights -- they're reconsidering reproduction.

In America, having just one child increases your carbon footprint by a factor of six. A family of four in Phoenix is a family of 12 somewhere else. It's not only conceivable, it's correct to assert that a single male who eats red meat and drives a truck to work every day will contribute less in his lifetime to global warming than a vegetarian mother who recycles, reduces, and reuses but raises offspring. It's similarly complex to the debate over true environmental impacts in agriculture -- think tearing down a forest to mono-crop soybeans for highly-processed vegetarian mock meats in the freezer aisle, and the food miles and lost carbon capture that goes with such an enterprise.

GINK is radical, powerful, extreme. Going child-free is a profoundly personal choice, one that's not typically encouraged in our society (cue your mom asking when you're going to give her a grandkid). When a woman reaches her ripe old 30s without having given birth, the questioning becomes all but incessant for many. Married and cohabitating couples who never have kids are often assumed to be strange or infertile. In our culture, we take pity on people who don't have kids and are confused by people who seem happily kid-free. Like the buddy who chooses a life of blissful bachelorhood, we wonder: "What's wrong with them?"

One thing's certain: the birth rate is dropping. Many people are GINKs whether they realize it or not!

For individuals making that choice, the benefits are many:

1. It's cheaper. No daycare, no college tuition.

2. It's easier. Starving artist? Busy executive? Urban studio apartment dweller? Add a kid to the equation and life gets a lot more difficult. GINK couples are free to spend their time how they please, taking vacations and pursuing their interests. Is this selfish, or just authentic?

3. It's liberating. Many people have children who don't really want them and do it out of social custom and guilt, and high child neglect and abuse rates are evidence of this. Some people just really aren't meant to be parents, and aren't happy as parents.

4. It's green. Really, really green. Suddenly, meatless Mondays don't seem so meaningful.

5. It's not for everyone. But it's also perfectly okay.

This is an article by Sara Ost, the editor-in-chief of EcoSalon.com, the conscious culture and fashion website for women of substance and style.

Expobioenergia’10

A Expobioenergia’10, a 5ª edição da feira internacional especializada em bioenergia, é um dos eventos mais importantes a nível internacional e terá lugar em Valladolid, de 27 a 29 de Outubro de 2010.


O sucesso alcançado em nas últimas edição transformou a Expobioenergia num ponto de encontro único no sector da bioenergia e num referencial a nível internacional.

A Expobioenergía’10 consolidou-se já como um encontro iniludível e oferece aos expositores e aos visitantes:

-Um elevado grau de especialização

-Um carácter eminentemente prático

-Uma ‘feira de máquinas em funcionamento’ afastada da convencional ‘feira de catálogos’

-Oportunidades de negócio

-Abertura ao mercado internacional

-Tratamento personalizado

Marque na sua agenda e se puder, vá, o planeta agradece.


Fonte: http://www.expobioenergia.com

Novo livro sobre as Energias Renováveis

O Atelier Nunes e Pã editou e produziu um novo livro sobre as Energias Renováveis, projecto já galardoado pelo REDDOT DESIGN AWARD 2010.


O livro é uma publicação que pretende responder às mais diversas questões sobre todas as áreas das Energias Renováveis, com uma linguagem clara e concisa, usando imagens, infografia, esquemas e gráficos no complemento da informação.

Esta publicação foi pensada essencialmente para o público Português, mas encontra-se também traduzida para inglês. O livro foi desenvolvido em parceria com as mais diversas personalidades, de instituições públicas e privadas que mais se destacam na área das Energias Renováveis em Portugal, nas mais de 300 páginas que compõem o livro.

Mais informação em:
Atelier Nunes e Pã

4 Green Tips Anyone Can Try

 

Green living is easier, and more rewarding, than you may have thought.

 

Green living must be incorporated into all areas of our lives on a daily basis in order to be the most effective. From what we wear to the vehicles we drive and everything we eat, all that we do must in some way save on resources and contribute to the good of the planet.

Here are a few ways on how to incorporate a sustainable lifestyle into everyday living.

Transportation

Taking public transportation, walking and biking are definite ways to get where we need to go without adding to the carbon footprint to get there. For most families having at least one vehicle is a necessity. And even though earth-friendly automobiles have had to work through some issues, they still are better for the environment than typical vehicles. Honda and Toyota have developed two new designs that are commercially successful and technologically innovative. If there is an absolute need for a larger vehicle, buy a hybrid vehicle like the Lexus SUV that provides size, luxury and uses less gas than a traditional SUV.

Landscaping

It is possible to maintain your property and still remain earth friendly. Use manual, rather than gas-powered lawn equipment for landscaping projects. This saves a huge amount of energy and carbon emissions while also providing a healthy workout at the same time. One natural way to cure dead spots in the grass that are caused by fungus is to use an organic treatment without hazardous chemicals. Horticultural cornmeal can treat these areas, control algae in water and minimize weeds. Regular grocery store cornmeal will not work because of the starch in the corn, but garden centers sell a special meal to use which is an all natural, sustainable way to cure lawn problems without adding chemicals to the soil that can drain into the water supply.

Travel

Take the green living way of life with you on vacation. Reuse towels at the hotel and request that linens are not changed every day during the stay as is customary in common hotels. Remember good habits like turning off the light when leaving the room and not leaving the water running when you brush your teeth. Choose earth-friendly travel destinations that offer attractions that don't strip resources. Opt for transportation other than flying, which produces more carbon emissions than other options. Thousands of hotels, bed and breakfasts and resorts offer eco-friendly lodging at comparable prices. Make an effort to find these lodgings when planning a vacation.

Socializing

Join with people who share a common interest in green living habits. Networking is a great way to meet new people, get fresh ideas and collect helpful resources. There are literally tons of clubs, organizations, schools and social opportunities where people with like mindsets get together on a regular basis. The Internet has loads of green blog sites for people to leave their comments and suggestions about sustainable goods and services they may have used. Green support groups keep their members up to date on the latest developments about the environment and offer each other stimulating conversation. Become a leader in the community who will advocate for the planet and will be willing to teach others to do the same.


This article was written by the staff of www.GreatGreenIdea.com, a site dedicated to teaching about great green ideas and healthy green living. The goal of the site is to help the public on the quest for "Guilt Free Green Living."

Recursos naturais em declínio alarmante

Relatório Planeta Vivo da organização ambientalista WWF mostra que a procura de recursos naturais está 50% acima do que a Terra pode oferecer.

O Relatório Planeta Vivo 2010 da organização ambientalista World Wild Fund (WWF), revela que as populações de espécies tropicais e os recursos naturais em geral estão decair a um ritmo alarmante.


O documento, apresentado esta semana em Portugal e em todo o mundo, sublinha que "a procura humana de recursos naturais está a atingir níveis nunca antes vistos", rondando os 50% acima do que a Terra pode oferecer.

A World Wild Fund utiliza o Índice Global Planeta Vivo para avaliar o estado de conservação de oito mil populações de mais de 2500 espécies e revela que este índice caiu 30% desde 1970 em termos globais, mas nas espécies tropicais essa queda foi de 60% e nas espécies tropicais de água doce atingiu os 70%.

As principais causas da perda de biodiversidade na Terra ficaram a dever-se à destruição dos habitats, sobre-exploração das espécies, poluição, espécies invasoras e alterações climáticas.

Pressão sobre os recursos naturais duplicou

A pressão sobre os recursos naturais duplicou desde 1966 e os seres humanos estão neste momento a usar o equivalente a 1,5 planetas para suportar as suas atividades, prevendo-se que em 2030 a Humanidade precise de dois planetas para esse efeito, se nada se alterar no seu modo de vida.

"Se este ritmo de consumo continuar, caminharemos para um ponto de não retorno", afirma Jim Leape, diretor-geral da WWF, esclarecendo que "seriam necessários 4,5 planetas para suportar a vida da população global", se esta tivesse um nível de consumo semelhante à União Europeia ou aos Estados Unidos.

O relatório conclui que as emissões de carbono são a principal causa "da tendência do planeta para um eventual colapso ecológico", explicando que a pegada de carbono aumentou 11 vezes nos últimos 50 anos e as emissões de carbono representam metade da pegada ecológica global.

Portugal com quase o dobro da pegada ecológica mundial

Portugal está com uma pegada ecológica de 4,5 hectares por habitante, quando a pegada mundial é de apenas 2,7 hectares. Se toda a Terra tivesse um estilo de vida semelhante ao nosso, a população mundial precisaria de 2,5 planetas para viver.

Os 31 países da OCDE, organização das economias mais ricas do mundo a que Portugal pertence, representam quase 40% da pegada global. No nosso país, estão ameaçadas 69% das espécies de peixes, 38% das aves, 32% dos répteis, 26% dos mamíferos e 19% dos anfíbios.

Os dez países com maior pegada ecológica por habitante são os Emirados Árabes Unidos, Qatar, Dinamarca, Bélgica, EUA, Estónia, Canadá, Austrália, Kuwait e Irlanda. "Os países que mantêm altos níveis de dependência dos recursos naturais estão a colocar as suas próprias economias em risco", alerta Mathis Wackernagel, presidente da Global Footprin Network, , que colaborou no relatório do World Wild Fund.

O mesmo responsável prevê que "os países capazes de oferecer maior qualidade de vida baseada numa menor pressão ecológica, serão líderes num mundo de contenção de recursos".

Estragos no ambiente: 11% do PIB global

Entretanto, um estudo recente promovido pela ONU concluiu que os estragos provocados no ambiente devido à atividade humana em 2008 representaram um prejuízo de cinco biliões de euros, isto é, o equivalente a 11% do PIB (riqueza produzida) a nível mundial.

Este valor é 20% superior à quebra do valor dos fundos de pensões nos países desenvolvidos provocada pela crise financeira de 2007/2008 e o estudo calcula que as 3.000 maiores empresas do mundo foram responsáveis por um terço desses estragos.

Fonte: www.expresso.pt

Conferência Novas Energias, Melhor Economia no Técnico

Irá realizar-se no próximo dia 21 de Outubro, pelas 14h30, no Salão Nobre do IST, a Conferência "Novas Energias. Melhor Economia" organizada pelo Ministério da Economia, da Inovação e do Desenvolvimento.


Na Conferência estará presente o Ministro da Economia, da Inovação e do Desenvolvimento, José Vieira da Silva, assim como o Presidente Executivo da Agência Internacional de Energia, Nobuo Tanaka.

Local: Salão Nobre, Instituto Superior Técnico – Campus Alameda

Hora: 14:30
Contacto: GCRP

Fonte: www.ist.utl.pt

Experiência de Portugal nas renováveis deve ser aproveitada pelo Reino Unido

Esta ideia foi defendida pela jornalista Syma Tariq num artigo publicado hoje no "The Guardian".


"Claro que a indústria energética em Portugal beneficia de um clima favorável. Mas mesmo que o tempo esteja mau durante a maior parte do ano, o Reino Unido também tem condições favoráveis. Tem dez vezes mais costa do que Portugal e beneficia de muito vento durante todo o ano", escreve Syma Tariq.

Assim, se "Portugal pode aumentar a dependência de electricidade verde de 17% para 45% em apenas cinco anos, os nossos líderes têm poucas desculpas para os nossos meros 3%".

A jornalista reconhece que as "energias renováveis são caras" mas acrescenta que "à medida que os custos com o investimento diminuem, e dado que as energias verdes têm poucos custos de manutenção, os preços deverão estabilizar ou até cair".

Syma Tariq defende que o Reino Unido devia aprender com a experiência portuguesa e destaca as medidas tomadas pelo governo português para incentivar o investimento em energias verdes.


"Há dez anos as linhas de transmissão eram detidas por empresas privadas que não tinham interesse em investir em energias renováveis devido aos custos envolvidos. Para contornar esta situação, o governo comprou estas linhas e começou a adaptar a rede, incluindo maior flexibilidade e melhores ligações em áreas remotas que permitem a produção e distribuição de energia a partir de pequenos geradores, como painéis solares domésticos. O governo concedeu ainda uma boa combinação de incentivos", destaca a jornalista.

Syma Tariq alerta que devido à queda da produção no Mar do Norte e ao aumento dos custos do uso do carvão, o Reino Unido pode tornar-se o maior importador de petróleo e gás em 2015. "Já Portugal que não tem combustíveis fósseis próprios, está a aproveitar os seus recursos naturais para produzir a sua própria energia limpa, segura e controlada internamente", destaca Tariq.

Fonte: Jornal de Negócios

Enel prepara IPO da unidade de energias renováveis para Novembro

A Enel Green Power, unidade de energias renováveis da italiana Enel SpA, começou esta segunda-feira a preparar o mercado para a oferta pública inicial (IPO) agendada para o final deste ano.


A operação poderá resultar num encaixe de três mil milhões de euros, o que tornará este o maior IPO dos últimos três anos na Europa.

Segundo um e-mail enviado a potenciais investidores no negócio, citado pela agência Dow Jones, o preço da operação será definido a 18 de Outubro, altura em que executivos da Enel Green Power começam a reunir-se com investidores. A operação pode acontecer cerca de um mês depois, em Novembro.

A Enel deverá dispersar em bolsa cerca de 30% do capital da unidade de energias alternativas, no âmbito de um plano de amortização de dívida. A italiana é a “utility” mais endividada da Europa, depois de ter embarcado numa vaga de aquisições nos últimos anos, que incluíram a espanhola Endesa.

A dívida líquida da empresa ascendia aos 53,89 mil milhões de euros no final de Junho, um montante que a Enel pretende reduzir para 45 mil milhões de euros.

Os analistas estimam que a Enel Green Power vale nove mil milhões de euros, o que leva a crer que os 30% sejam vendidos por cerca de três mil milhões de euros.

Fonte: Jornal de Negócios

Study Finds More Fresh Water Entering the Earth's Oceans

A recent study from researchers at the University of California (UC) Irvine has found that since 1994, the overall amount of fresh water flowing into the world's oceans has increased significantly. They found that 18 percent more fresh water has reached the oceans between 1994 and 2006, an average annual rise of 1.5 percent.

The biggest reasons for the increase are the more frequent and extreme storms which are attributable to global warming. It is also a consequence of melting polar ice. The research team, led by UC Irvine Earth System Science Professor, Jay Famiglietti, focused on the issue of greater storm water runoff reaching the oceans.


Unfortunately, the increased precipitation falls unevenly over the Earth's surface. This is a phenomenon of global warming; the higher-rainfall areas of the world get wetter, and the more arid regions get drier.

According to Famiglietti, "In general, more water is good. But here's the problem: Not everybody is getting more rainfall, and those who are may not need it. What we're seeing is exactly what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted — that precipitation is increasing in the tropics and the Arctic Circle with heavier, more punishing storms. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people live in semiarid regions, and those are drying up."

The study found that global warming has triggered an acceleration of the evaporation and precipitation cycle. Higher temperatures over the oceans cause the fresh water to evaporate and form thicker clouds. It is then dumped on land in ferocious torrents, often in the form of hurricanes or monsoons (think Pakistan floods). The fresh water then finds its way back to the ocean via rivers and channels.

Therefore global warming should also increase river flow throughout wetter regions. However, there is no global system in place to measure river discharge levels, so no definitive data is available at this point.

What the study employed instead was NASA satellites and other satellites that are capable of tracking total water volume each month flowing from the continents into the sea. From the satellite data, the team assembled a 13-year record of sea-level rise, precipitation, and evaporation. The final conclusion is that rising temperatures accelerate the hydrologic cycle, the benefits of which are distributed unevenly over the globe.

The scientists admit, however, that despite their work spanning the longest time frame ever for this type of research, the 13-year study is still a relatively short period, and that more research is needed and is underway.

The UC Irvine study was done in conjunction with researchers from the University of South Florida, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, and Remote Sensing Systems of Santa Rosa, CA. Funding was provided by NASA. The research is published in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Source: www.enn.com

Serão os homens mais poluidores que as mulheres?

Recentemente foram realizados estudos na Suécia com o objectivo de analizar os hábitos de consumo e de actividades diárias de homens e mulheres. Os resultados aplicados à análise da pégada ecológica de cada um, reflectem que os homens serão potencialmente os mais poluidores.


Desde hábitos de condução, actividades ligadas ao trabalho, entretenimento e actividades domésticas, são momentos que destacam as diferenças entre sexos na contribuição para o aquecimento global, sendo o estado civil de cada um dos factores influenciadores nesses mesmo hábitos.

Algumas dessas diferenças indicam os homens como os mais poluidores e maiores consumidores de energia:

1.Devido ao gosto que a maioria dos homens têm pelo mundo automóvel, são os que gastam mais horas a conduzir, emitindo grandes níveis de carbono

2.São também os homens que, no que toca à condução passam mais tempo a conduzir antes de perguntarem por indicações para chegar ao destino

3.As mulheres solteiras gastam menos energia do que os homens na mesma situação

4.Os homens consomem mais energia devido a passarem mais tempo em actividades como jogos e actividades de productividade

5.No entanto, em contradição, são os homens os que mais se preocupam com questões ambientais em comparação com as mulheres. E são as mulheres que mais energia gastam quando são as responsáveis por tarefas domésticas.

Serão estes factores conclusivos de uma maior responsabilidade pelo aquecimento global por parte dos homens? Construír uma visão repartida ou de colaboração, repartindo os hábitos responsáveis pode ser a solução. O que acham: os homens serão mesmo mais irresponsáveis na sustentabilidade?


Fonte: www.bigthink.com

Dormir no Jardim - em Coimbra

Um (pequeno) hotel sustentável instalou-se no Botânico em Coimbra. Para os que se preocupam com a sua pegada ecológica

Não é um jardim qualquer. É o maior do País, com 13 hectares de terreno, grande parte doado pelos monges beneditinos.


Situado em Coimbra desde 1772, iniciativa de Marquês de Pombal, o Jardim Botânico da Universidade de Coimbra (JBUC) é um ex-líbris da cidade dos estudantes por muitos e vários motivos.

Aos quais se acrescenta agora mais um: a possibilidade de dormir no seu interior, em pleno contacto com a natureza no Tree Hotel que acaba de se instalar na mata, precisamente "a zona mais isolada, quase uma floresta no meio da cidade", como a descreve Helena Freitas, diretora do JBUC. "Aquele era o local usado pelos monges beneditinos para terem alguma espiritualidade", conta-nos.

O Tree Hotel foi criado pelo estúdio lisboeta Dass para a última edição da Experimenta Design.

Morou, durante três meses, no Jardim da Estrela, em Lisboa, e já passou por Silves e Leiria. É um projeto experimental de arquitetura e design sustentável que questiona os processos de criação das cidades e da arquitetura e o crescimento brutal do número de habitantes nas metrópoles. Foi Nuno Janeiro, estudante finalista de arquitetura e um dos responsáveis pela promoção deste hotel de geometria irregular, que lançou o desafio ao Botânico. O local "reúne as condições perfeitas para a privacidade" dos hóspedes, diz. O hotel foi colocado no Bambuzal, ao lado de uma capela centenária.

A intenção da diretora do jardim é "promover a ideia de ecologia urbana. Do ponto de vista arquitetónico, o hotel apela à construção sustentável, em sintonia com o espaço envolvente". E quem não gostaria de ter um jardim só para si durante uma noite? Este pequeno hotel (com uma cama de casal e WC) não tem luz elétrica, mas está ligado à rede de água e esgotos. À noite, terá que acender as velas de um candelabro ou duas lanternas LED que se ligam à manivela. Outra das mais--valias é a cobertura onde poderá contemplar a natureza. Tudo sem aumentar a sua pegada ecológica.

Se a aceitação do público for positiva, a diretora do Botânico admite que o Tree possa ficar ali por tempo indeterminado. No futuro, Helena Freitas gostaria ainda de abrir um restaurante de cozinha biológica neste enorme jardim onde reina a tranquilidade.

ESTÚDIO DASS

Para desenvolver este projeto, o estúdio Dass reuniu-se com biólogos, paisagistas, empresas de construção na investigação de novos materiais. "A inspiração para a construção deste micro-hotel não é a arquitetura, mas a própria natureza", assegura o ateliê. Em julho, o Tree Hotel foi mesmo nomeado para o prémios Outros Mercadus, que destaca obras de arquitetura e design efémeras construídas no nosso país.


Reservas Tree Hotel Coimbra

treehotelcoimbra@gmail.com

Seg-Qui €50/noite

Sex-Dom €70/noite

How to Save the Wild Tiger

Tigers, like most big cats of the world, are in retreat. In the past, tigers were found all throughout Asia, from the Caspian Sea to Siberia and Indonesia. Now they occupy only six percent of their former range. In the last decade alone, tiger-occupied area has decreased by 41 percent. Despite decades of conservation initiatives, the number of tigers in the wild is at an all-time low. According to a new study from an international team of researchers, efforts should be concentrated on a few key sites in order to save the species from extiction.

The report was produced by a team including the University of Cambridge, Wildlife Conservation Society, and others, and is published in the journal PLoS Biology. Co-author, John Robinson, said, "The tiger is facing its last stand as a species...we are confident that the world community will come together to bring these iconic big cats back from the brink of extinction."


The report encourages conservationists to focus on 42 "source sites" as the top priority for the tiger's recovery. The price tag of doing so would be an estimated $35 million more than what is currently being spent on tiger conservation per year.

Unfortunately, the situation for the tiger is dire. Their global population is less than 3,500, of which a mere 1,000 are breeding females. Certain tiger populations have completely disappeared such as those in Cambodia, China, Vietnam, and North Korea. The remaining populations are pressured by habitat loss, killing or capture for human use, and from overhunting of their own prey. A huge factor in the recent decline of tigers is the demand for tiger body parts to be used as medicine.

The 42 source sites are defined as sites that have breeding populations and have the best chance to seed the tiger's recovery over a larger area in the future. It is akin to establishing no-fishing zones in the oceans in order to increase overall fish numbers. These sites would be safe havens for a predicted 70 percent of the global tiger population. However, they must be coupled with effective law enforcement and scientific monitoring. The result may be a rapid increase in tigers over a short span of time.

India has been singled out as the most important country for tiger conservation, with 18 source sites. Sumatra (largest island of Indonesia) also has eight, and the Russian Far East has six. The cost of this new conservation attempt would be borne mostly by the host countries but with contributions from international donors and NGOs. This fall, Russia will be hosting an international "Tiger Summit" with the hope of jump-starting this new coordinated effort.

A resurgence of the tiger population would be heartening to see. A poll conducted by the channel, Animal Planet, labeled the Tiger as the world's favorite animal, even beating out the dog. If this is the case, then people will recognize their importance and the need to ensure their survival.

Source: www.een.com

EDP dá 850 mil lâmpadas de baixo consumo

A EDP vai lançar uma campanha de troca de lâmpadas incadescentes por lâmpadas economizadoras nos super e hipermercados da Sonae.

A EDP, em parceria com a Sonae, está a promover desde o passado sábado uma campanha de troca de lâmpadas incadescentes por lâmpadas economizadoras.


A campanha decorre de 4 de Setembro a 4 de Outubro nos supermercados e hipermercados Modelo e Continente e ainda nas lojas da EDP. por cada lâmpada incadescente a EDP dá duas eficientes.

As lâmpadas economizadoras gastam, segundo a EDP, cinco vezes menos do que as lâmpadas incandescentes e duram, em média oito vezes mais.

Fonte: www.expresso.pt

The Earth's 6th Great Mass Extinction is Occurring as You Read This -A Galaxy Classic

"In one sense we know much less about Earth than we do about Mars. The vast majority of life forms on our planet are still undiscovered, and their significance for our own species remains unknown. This gap in our knowledge is a serious matter: we will never completely understand and preserve the living world around us at our present level of ignorance.


"If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos."

Edward O. Wilson, The world's leading authority on Biodiversity, Emeritus Professor of Biology at Harvard and author of "The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth."

There is little doubt left in the minds of professional biologists that Earth is currently faced with a mounting loss of species that threatens to rival the five great mass extinctions of the geological past, the most devasting being the Third major Extinction (c. 245 mya), the Permian, where 54% of the planet's species families lost. As long ago as 1993, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson estimated that Earth is currently losing something on the order of 30,000 species per year -- which breaks down to the even more daunting statistic of some three species per hour. Some biologists have begun to feel that this biodiversity crisis -- this "Sixth Extinction" -- is even more severe, and more imminent, than Wilson had supposed.

.../...

It is a radical vision to many people, and the Wildlands Project expects that it will take at least 100 years to complete. Even so, projects like this, on a worldwide basis, may be humanity’s best chance of saving what’s left of the planets eco-system, and the human race along with it.

Please read the full arcticle at : The Earth's 6th Great Mass Extinction

150 mil cabras vão ajudar a combater incêndios

A partir do próximo ano, a prevenção de incêndios florestais vai ter um novo aliado: o gado caprino.


Trata-se de um projecto levado a cabo pelo Agrupamento Europeu de Cooperação Territorial Douro-Duero para ser implementado nos distritos de Bragança e Guarda, do lado português e nas províncias de Zamora e Salamanca, do lado espanhol.

Chama-se “Self-Prevention” e consiste em introduzir 150 mil cabeças de gado caprino nesta região para que actuem como “limpadores naturais” dos campos agrícolas abandonados e dos montes, deixando livres de vegetação zonas de potencial perigo de incêndio.

“Pretendem que sejam 150 mil que vão pastorear nesta região. O gado caprino vai aonde o homem não chega e limpam tudo por onde passam”, explica Jorge Gomes, o governador civil de Bragança, que apoia o projecto. O governador salienta a importância desta iniciativa para a prevenção dos fogos florestais.

“Para além da vertente de prevenção dos incêndios, está em causa um projecto de grande dimensão, de desenvolvimento económico, de combate à desertificação, que vai criar riqueza, postos de trabalho e novas infraestruturas industriais.”

Está prevista a criação de uma empresa que ficará responsável pela distribuição dos efectivos caprinos e pela criação de equipamentos que sustentem a rentabilidade económica do projecto.

É o caso de 12 queijarias, 15 lojas de comercialização de produtos e dois matadouros.

Serviços que vão criar 558 postos de trabalho.

“Na criação dos cabritos, nas queijarias, nas lojas de apoio, enfim. São em infraestruturas que têm de ser edificadas nos quatro distritos.”

O projecto vai começar a ser implementado no próximo ano e está orçado em 48 milhões de euros.

Fonte: http://www.brigantia.pt/

Mass Extinction Threat: Earth on Verge of Huge Reset Button?

Article by: Jeremy Hsu

LiveScience Senior Writer

Mass extinctions have served as huge reset buttons that dramatically changed the diversity of species found in oceans all over the world, according to a comprehensive study of fossil records. The findings suggest humans will live in a very different future if they drive animals to extinction, because the loss of each species can alter entire ecosystems.

Some scientists have speculated that effects of humans - from hunting to climate change - are fueling another great mass extinction. A few go so far as to say we are entering a new geologic epoch, leaving the 10,000-year-old Holocene Epoch behind and entering the Anthropocene Epoch , marked by major changes to global temperatures and ocean chemistry, increased sediment erosion, and changes in biology that range from altered flowering times to shifts in migration patterns of birds and mammals and potential die-offs of tiny organisms that support the entire marine food chain.

Scientists had once thought species diversity could help buffer a group of animals from such die-offs, either keeping them from heading toward extinction or helping them to bounce back. But having many diverse species also proved no guarantee of future success for any one group of animals, given that mass extinctions more or less wiped the slate clean, according to studies such as the latest one.

Then and now

Looking back in time, the diversity of large taxonomic groups (which include lots of species), such as snails or corals, mostly hovered around a certain equilibrium point that represented a diversity limit of species' numbers. But that diversity limit also appears to have changed spontaneously throughout Earth's history about every 200 million years.

How today's extinction crisis - species today go extinct at a rate that may range from 10 to 100 times the so-called background extinction rate - may change the face of the planet and its species goes beyond what humans can predict, the researchers say.

"The main implication is that we're really rolling the dice," said John Alroy, a paleobiologist at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. "We don't know which groups will suffer the most, which groups will rebound the most quickly, or which ones will end up with higher or lower long-term equilibrium diversity levels."

What seems certain is that the fate of each animal group will differ greatly, Alroy said.

His analysis, detailed in the Sept. 3 issue of the journal Science, is based on almost 100,000 fossil collections in the Paleobiology Database (PaleoDB).

The findings revealed various examples of diversity shifts, including one that took place in a group of ocean bottom-dwelling bivalves called brachiopods, which are similar to clams and oysters. They dominated the Paleozoic era from 540 million to 250 million years ago, and branched out into new species during two huge adaptive spurts of growth in diversity - each time followed by a big crash.

The brachiopods then reached a low, but steady, equilibrium over the past 250 million years in which there wasn't a surge or a crash in species' numbers, and still live on today as a rare group of marine animals.

Counting creatures better

In the past, researchers have typically counted species in the fossil record by randomly drawing a set number of samples from each time period - a method that can leave out less common species. In fact two studies using the PaleoDB used this approach.

Instead, Alroy used a new approach called shareholder sampling, in which he tracked how frequently certain groups appeared in the fossil record, and then counted enough samples until he hit a target number representative of the proportion for each group.

"In some sense the older methods are a little like the American voting system - the first-past-the-post-winner method basically makes minority views invisible," said Charles Marshall, a paleontologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who did not take part in the study. "However, with proportional systems, minority views still get seats in parliament."

Marshall added that the study was the "most thorough quantitative analysis to date using global marine data ." But he added that researchers will probably debate whether the PaleoDB data represents a complete-enough picture of the fossil record.

Nothing lasts forever

The idea that rules of diversity change should not come as a surprise for most researchers, according to Marshall.

"To me, the really interesting possibility is that some groups might not yet be close enough to their caps to have those caps be manifest yet," Marshall told LiveScience. Or "evolutionary innovation" might happen so quickly that new groups emerged to increase overall diversity, even if each sub-group reached a cap on diversity.

If anything, the record of past extinctions has shown the difficulty of predicting which groups win out in the long run. "Surviving is one thing and recovering is another," said Marshall, who wrote a Perspectives piece about the study in the same issue of Science.

One of the few consistent patterns is that growth spurts in diversity can apparently happen at any time, according to Alroy. He added that the background extinction of individual species has also remained consistent - the average species lasts just a few million years.

Of course, the ongoing extinction crisis of modern times goes far beyond the background extinction rate. Alroy noted that it could not only wipe out entire branches of evolutionary history, but may also change the ecosystems shaped by each species.

That means today's species matter for environments around the world, and so humans can't simply expect replacements from the diverse species of the future.

"If we lose all the reef builders, we may not get back the physical reefs for millions of years no matter how fast we get back all the species diversity in a simple sense," Alroy said.

How Green Is Golf?

By John Barton



Illustration By Christoph Niemann


In January 1995, 81 people got together in a conference room at Pebble Beach for three days to discuss what could be done to make golf more eco-friendly. Present were representatives from all the major golfing bodies, and all the leading national and local environmental groups, too. There had never been such a meeting before. "It was really difficult getting some people to come," recalls Paul Parker, executive vice president of the Center for Resource Management, which orchestrated the meeting. "Particularly from the golf-community side, there was a lot of suspicion about who these environmental people were, and why they kept criticizing golf. They felt that the environmentalists didn't understand the game and had not made much of an effort to understand it. They saw these guys as the enemy."

"We really expected an explosive atmosphere," says Ted Horton, who at the time was vice president of resource management for Pebble Beach, with responsibility for the whole property, including all the golf courses and 17 Mile Drive. "I had the job of welcoming the group on that first morning. My heart was in my throat. I thought, We could have some real fireworks here."

But the attendees talked. And talked. And today, 15 years later, after five national conferences and dozens of smaller meetings and workshops, they're still talking. Improvements have been made, reports, guidebooks and educational videos have been published, and the effort -- which has become known as the Golf & the Environment Initiative -- has allowed the game to claim that it's cleaning up its act.

Wait, you say, hasn't golf always been green? Golf courses have trees and grass, critters; all kinds of nature and stuff, right? What's not to like? Better than a strip mall or a parking lot, surely. Yes, yes, of course. But the fact is that before the 1995 meeting, there were serious issues surrounding golf and its impact on the environment. And -- despite much self-congratulatory hyperbole from the golf industry about environmental sensitivity, sustainability and stewardship, and the obligatory eco-claims of every new golf resort -- there are still plenty of serious problems today. There are issues about where golf courses are built, about how they're built, and especially about how they're maintained. Golf could do more. As Parker says: "There's a terrific opportunity for golf and golf courses to demonstrate real environmental leadership. The attitude generally is, yeah, we need to do some things to avoid getting criticized. That's where the vision ends."

To find out more about these issues, and how serious they are, and what's being done about them, I interviewed a variety of the leading thinkers who reside at the intersection of golf and the environment: a golf-course architect, an anti-pesticide activist, an organic golf-course superintendent, a government regulator, a golf-course inspector, a turfgrass expert, an environmentalist. We talked about golf, where it has been and where it's headed. The conversations were long and at times contradictory, complicated and confusing. We spoke of water tables, endocrine function, genetically engineered grass. Salamanders. The American chestnut. President Bush. From the many hours of transcribed tapes, plus plenty of other conversations, visits to obscure corners of various libraries, and late-night sessions with Google, here are some of my conclusions about golf and the environment:

GOLF IN AMERICA WILL FACE A CRISIS OVER WATER.

There simply won't be enough to go around for golf courses to continue to do what they've been doing (one report says U.S. courses each use on average 300,000 gallons a day). Water is going to have to be increasingly carefully managed by everyone -- some have even described it as "the new oil." By 2025, according to the United Nations Environmental Programme's 2007 report, about 1.8 billion people in the world will be living in conditions of absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the planet will be subject to water stress. In America, demand for water grows while global warming has meant shrinking glaciers and mountain snow levels (and thus less snowmelt to fill our streams and rivers and reservoirs), more evaporation of freshwater reserves and lower rainfall in some areas and even unexpected droughts (not to mention rising sea levels threatening some coastal courses -- see page 207). There will be increasing financial and regulatory pressures on golf courses' use of water, especially in high-population desert areas where shortages are acute, such as Las Vegas, one of the fastest growing cities in America (the population has tripled to 1.7 million in the last 20 years, and by one estimate that figure might double by 2015). Recently the U.S. Geological Survey announced that demands on the aquifer beneath the Coachella Valley in California -- including from 126 area golf courses -- are so great that in the past nine years, large parts of the valley have sunk more than a foot.

In the short term, golf has already proved to be innovative in adapting to the challenge of conserving water. Some golf courses are using treated effluent water or wastewater instead of drinkable water, irrigating smaller areas of the property, irrigating more efficiently and with better equipment, raising mowing heights, and using new strains of grass that require dramatically less water. All of these things will continue. New courses in the desert will become rarer. The practice of overseeding fairways in the South with cool-season grasses in the winter will become harder to justify, and less common. A lot of golf courses might disappear.

THE PESTICIDES THAT GOLF COURSES USE, AND THE ONES THAT PEOPLE THROW ON THEIR LAWNS, PERHAPS ARE NOT AS SAFE AS WE BLITHELY ASSUME THEM TO BE.

To coin a phrase, there are known knowns when it comes to pesticides, but there are also an awful lot of unknown unknowns. Even if the superintendents at every one of America's 16,000 courses are rigorous in applying pesticides sparingly and with extreme caution -- and given the pressure they're often under to deliver unblemished, Augusta-like grass year-round, that's unlikely -- can we be sure these chemicals aren't harmful? There are many unanswered questions. Why are various diseases like autism, asthma and all kinds of cancers on the rise? Why are Western men and women increasingly infertile? Why did my friend's girlfriend's dog get tongue cancer and die? It's not unreasonable to think that exposure to synthetic chemicals -- some of whose residues are found in high concentrations as far away as the Arctic -- are to blame. There's a reason that, for instance, Connecticut recently banned pesticides from all school grounds (grades K through 8), and why more than 30 states have some kind of pesticide restriction on school property. There's a reason golf-course superintendents dress like Power Rangers when they spray the golf course. There's a reason the organic movement is growing.

ENVIRONMENTALISM ISN'T GOING AWAY.

As global warming increases, and common sense prevails, and the leaders of commerce and industry realize there's a buck to be made by being green-minded (or, more often, pretending to be), environmentalism is going to have large, growing and profound effects on all of our lives. What does this mean for golf? Like the fur coat and the SUV, the "Augusta look" -- freakishly green wall-to-wall grass on a life-support system of too much water and toxic chemicals, greens running at virtually unplayable speeds, ornamental flowers all over the place -- will become less admired, and even stigmatized. It works for the Masters, but that's just one week a year at an extremely wealthy private club that gets very little play (there are only 300 members, and the course is closed all summer). It doesn't work -- and isn't desirable -- at most other places. The aspiration -- obsession -- to be like Augusta has probably always had less to do with the needs and wants of golfers, who know that the game is all about taking the rough with the smooth, and more to do with the egos of golf-course owners, tournament directors and people who sit on greens committees.

As water becomes scarcer, as organic-management practices increase, as environmentalism and environmental legislation start to bite more than they have, as the economy struggles, and as we come to appreciate the aesthetics of golf courses in all their many natural, beautiful hues, the way the game looks will change. And the way it plays will change too, with firmer and faster turf demanding a return to shotmaking, creativity, the bump-and-run. It's starting to happen already: The hot courses are not dutiful apostles of Augusta; they are unique, wild and woolly-looking layouts like Bandon Dunes, Sand Hills, Chambers Bay. Americans increasingly love to visit the rugged, natural links of the British Isles, where the game began. That's where we're headed: back to the future.



Source: http://www.golfdigest.com/magazine

Incêndios equivalem a mais 50.000 carros na estrada

Os incêndios deste Verão, que já provocaram a perda de mais de 95.000 hectares, levaram a uma diminuição importante de capacidade de sequestro de dióxido de carbono da floresta nacional, que a empresa OFF7 estima em mais de 100.000 toneladas por ano, o mesmo montante emitido por aproximadamente 50.000 veículos ligeiros em igual período. A área florestal portuguesa tem um papel importante no cumprimento dos objectivos do Protocolo de Quioto, uma vez que as árvores sequestram, ou retiram da atmosfera, dióxido de carbono da atmosfera ao longa da sua vida útil.


Catarina Veiga, responsável pela quantificação de emissões na OFF7, refere que "a perda de capacidade anual de sequestro representa mais do dobro das emissões directas provocadas pela queima das árvores" (que, segundo dados do Instituto Meteorológico, são de cerca de 50.000 toneladas de CO2). A responsável refere ainda que "a reposição desta capacidade de sequestro pode demorar décadas, uma vez que mesmo que a reflorestação seja imediata as árvores precisam de largos anos até atingirem a sua capacidade plena de absorção de CO2".

Os objectivos traçados por Portugal para o Protocolo de Quioto levam em consideração alguma perda de capacidade de sequestro provocada pelos incêndios florestais, mas anos particularmente maus como o actual ou como 2003 e 2005 (em que arderam, respectivamente, mais de 135.000 e 125.000 hectares de floresta) ficam de fora, dificultando o cumprimento dos objectivos definidos.

Sobre a off7

A off7 é uma empresa nacional, criada com o objectivo de contribuir para que Portugal caminhe rapidamente para uma economia de baixo carbono. Pretende mostrar que reduzir emissões de carbono é, mais que uma necessidade, uma oportunidade para reduzir custos energéticos, desenvolver tecnologia inovadora e comunicar uma imagem mais verde ao mercado. Foi recentemente considerada pela Carbon Catalog como uma das 10 melhores empresas do mundo nesta área.

Mais informações em http://www.off7.pt/

Localização dos Parques Eólicos em Portugal

Como os mapas acima, publicados no documento trimestral do INEGI sobre Parques Eólicos em Portugal, indicam, a maior parte dos parques eólicos instalados em Portugal encontram-se na metade norte do País.

Como referido na rubrica sobre energia eólica, os locais mais ventosos costumam encontrar-se nas zonas costeira e no cume dos montes. Sendo a costa portuguesa densamente povoada, os parques eólicos em Portugal têm vindo a ser construídos em zonas mais interiores, mas montanhosas, para maximizar o recurso eólico.

Outros parques, menos numerosos, foram instalados em zonas costeiras pouco povoadas, como é o caso da costa alentejana. Ao contrário, o interior da grande planície alentejana representa uma zona com potencial eólico muito reduzido.

Fonte: www.eneop.pt